9780679723059

What We Talk About When We Talk About Love: Stories

In his second collection of stories, as in his first, Carver's characters are peripheral people--people without education, insight or prospects, people too unimaginative to even give up. Carver celebrates these men and women.

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Review:

"What We Talk About When We Talk About Love" is not only the most well-known short story title of the latter part of the 20th century; it has come to stand for an entire aesthetic, the bare-bones prose style for which Raymond Carver became famous. Perhaps, it could be argued, too famous, at least for his fiction's own good. Like those of Hemingway or any other writer similarly loved, imitated, parodied, and reviled, these stories can sometimes produce the sense of reading pastiche. "A man without hands came to the door to sell me a photograph of my house." "That morning she pours Teacher's over my belly and licks it off. That afternoon she tries to jump out the window." "My friend Mel McGinnis was talking. Mel is a cardiologist, and sometimes that gives him the right." What other writer ever produced first sentences like these? They are like doors into Carverworld, where everyone speaks in simple declarative phrases, no one ever stops at one beer, and failure or violence are the true outcomes of the American dream.

Yet these stories bear careful re-reading, like any truly important and enduring work. For one thing, Carver is one of the few writers who can make desperation--cutting your ex-wife's telephone cord in the middle of a conversation, standing on your own roof chunking rocks while a man with no hands takes your picture--deeply funny. Then there is the sheer craft that went into their creation. Despite their seeming simplicity, his tales are as artfully constructed as poems--and like poems, the best of them can make your breath catch in your throat. In the title piece, for instance, after the gin has been drunk, after the stories have been told, after the tensions in the room have come to the surface and subsided again, there comes a moment of strange lightness and peace: "I could hear my heart beating. I could hear everyone's heart. I could hear the human noise we sat there making, not one of us moving, not even when the room went dark."

Much of what happens in What We Talk About When We Talk About Love (1981) happens offstage, and we're left with tragedy's props: booze, instant coffee, furniture from a failed marriage, cigarettes smoked in the middle of the night. This is not merely a matter of technique. Carver leaves out a great deal, but that's only a measure of his characters' vulnerability, the nerve endings his stories lay bare. To say anything more, one feels, would simply hurt too much. --Mary Park

Book Description Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 1989. Paperback. Book Condition: New. New Book. Shipped from US within 10 to 14 business days. Established seller since 2000. Bookseller Inventory # VR-9780679723059

Book Description Random House USA Inc, United States, 1992. Paperback. Book Condition: New. Vintage Books ed. 200 x 130 mm. Language: English Brand New Book. Featured in the Academy Award-winning (Best Picture) film Birdman starring Michael Keaton In his second collection of stories, as in his first, Carver s characters are peripheral people--people without education, insight or prospects, people too unimaginative to even give up. Carver celebrates these men and women. Bookseller Inventory # ABZ9780679723059

Book Description Vintage. PAPERBACK. Book Condition: New. 0679723056 Brand New in Mint condition. Guaranteed delivery in 2-4 days when you order with Expedited Shipping! No Expedited shipping to PO Boxes. Bookseller Inventory # 0679723056

Book Description Vintage, 1989. Book Condition: New. Brand New, Unread Copy in Perfect Condition. A+ Customer Service! Summary: In his second collection of stories, as in his first, Carver's characters are peripheral people--people without education, insight or prospects, people too unimaginative to even give up. Carver celebrates these men and women. Bookseller Inventory # ABE_book_new_0679723056

Book Description Paperback. Book Condition: New. 133mm x 12mm x 204mm. Paperback. In his second collection of stories, as in his first, Carver's characters are peripheral peoplepeople without education, insight or prospects, people too unimaginative to even give up. Ca.Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability. 176 pages. 0.285. Bookseller Inventory # 9780679723059